A Murder of Crows (2 page)

H
ICKS KNEW
he was being watched.

The question was why.

There was no reason why anyone should have been paying attention to him. He had put a lot of effort into looking anonymous. He had intentionally let his hair grow shaggy in the two weeks since the bio-attack on New York. He hadn’t touched a razor in days and his face bore a healthy amount of graying stubble. His jacket and hooded sweatshirt were from the discount rack at a sporting goods store and both were in dire need of washing. His sneakers were five years out of style and looked it. The cheap nylon backpack over his left shoulder was scuffed and filthy.

Hicks looked like a bike messenger down on his luck or an actor who had been fired from his gig waiting tables. He looked like he may have been homeless or awfully close to it. He looked like the type of man you didn’t want to look at for long because he might ask you for something.

That was the point.

Blending in had always been easy for him, but it had never been more important until now. Capturing the terrorist known as The Moroccan had changed everything for Hicks and for his organization, The University.

As soon as he crossed Lexington, Hicks continued walking east, checking the street for obvious signs of surveillance. He looked for someone trailing him on foot or eyeing him from a doorway. He was mindful of people sitting in parked cars or posing as tourists taking pictures of him as he moved.

But no one paid attention to him and no one seemed to act out of the ordinary. If anything, people were going out of their way to avoid looking at him, exactly as he had planned.

But he still couldn’t shake the sense of someone tracking him. It wasn’t paranoia. He had spent half of his life in the field in various parts of the world. Over the years, he had developed a finely attuned sixth sense of when he was being watched and he knew someone was watching him now.

It wasn’t surveillance in the modern sense where most people are captured by security cameras simply by walking down the street. Such passive observation was like background noise to him as constant and unavoidable as car horns and sirens in Manhattan.

But there was nothing passive about this feeling of being surveilled. It vibed intentional. Focused.

But where? Who? How?

Hicks crossed Third Avenue and decided to walk uptown. He decided to stop mid-block, step off the curb and hail a cab. Unpredictable movements often caused surveillance teams to make mistakes. He glanced around to see if someone had stopped short or suddenly walked across the street, but the rhythm of the Midtown street hadn’t changed. Deliverymen kept making deliveries while office workers pushed their way through the revolving doors of office buildings and pedestrians kept walking to wherever they were supposed to be.

No one seemed to give a damn about James Hicks, but he still couldn’t shake the feeling he was being observed. Maybe it was instinct. Maybe it was one of the only reasons why he was still alive after so many years in the Game.

He didn’t have to see someone watching him to know he was being watched. He
knew
.

A cab broke out of the flow of traffic and stopped in front of him at the curb. Hicks climbed in the back seat and told the driver to take him to Eightieth Street and Third Avenue.

Hicks had no reason to go to Eightieth Street and Third Avenue. He had no intention of going that far, either, but he had to tell the driver to take him somewhere. A random street corner on the Upper East Side seemed as good a destination as any. The back seat of a cab allowed him to blend in for a while until he figured out what—if anything—was going on.

He spotted the sign pasted to the plastic divider between the passenger and the driver:

SMILE! YOU’RE ON CAMERA RIGHT NOW!

After a recent rash of robberies throughout the city, many cab owners had installed cameras in their cabs to photograph attackers. Hicks saw a small wireless camera had been installed next to the rearview mirror. He happened to be familiar with that particular model and knew a red light should be on if the camera was active. The red light was off. He bet the damned thing had never been set up properly. A half-hearted attempt to satisfy the cab owner’s nervous insurance agency.

Hicks pulled out his University-designated handheld device and entered his access code. If the driver had bothered to look back at him, he would have assumed his passenger was merely another phone drone checking his email or posting something on Facebook.

Nothing could have been further from the truth.

After entering his access code, Hicks tapped a benign-looking icon on the home screen which activated the phone’s camera. The camera scanned his facial features while the screen read his thumbprint and biometrics.

In nanoseconds, Hicks’ identity was confirmed and a bland screen appeared asking for his secure twelve-digit identification number. After entering it, Hicks was granted access to one of the most advanced computer networks in the world: the Optimized Mechanical and Network Integration protocol (OMNI). The name was a relic of the University’s past and had been around almost since the beginning of the University itself. But like most institutional phrases, it had a habit of hanging on even though the system had outgrown its name.

The driver edged the cab back into the sluggish flow of northbound traffic, but got stuck at a red light at the corner. Hicks decided to put the delay to good use. He tapped through a series of OMNI’s prompts until he gained access to the satellite the University had parked in permanent orbit in space high above Manhattan.

Tapping a few more prompts allowed him to direct the University’s satellite to identify all secure signals in his general vicinity. If anyone was tracking him remotely or communicating via a secure signal, OMNI could identify and track it.

Hicks’ narrowed the scope of the scan to filter out standard cell phone traffic and emergency responder frequencies, including his cab’s radio network. He focused the search on identifying secure networks used by a select few law enforcement agencies and other, more covert groups. If someone was watching him, it was most likely someone from one of those sectors.

OMNI’s results appeared as icons dotting a real time map. He was surprised to see the number of federal frequencies in range of his current position. Some were easy to explain. Both United States Senators from New York had offices in the building across the street from his cab’s location. Secret Service agents guarded each senator’s district office, hence the secure federal signals. That had nothing to do with him.

OMNI also detected a few stray FBI signals, but they were moving west from his position. They didn’t appear to have anything to do with him, either. More good news. Although he could dodge FBI surveillance, it would take a lot of caution and time, which could be spent on more important efforts like breaking The Moroccan.

But he grew concerned when a third icon on the handheld’s map began blinking red. Hicks tapped on the screen and saw OMNI had identified it as another secure signal being emitted on street level.

Right outside his cab.

Hicks looked out the cab’s window at the spot where OMNI had located the signal. All he saw was the usual endless parade of Midtown foot traffic streaming in both directions. No one was standing still. No one was watching his cab. There weren’t even any homeless people panhandling in front of the ATM at the corner.

Hicks checked his handheld again and verified the location of the secure federal signal. The source was stationary. Even from thousands of miles above the earth, OMNI’s global positioning system was accurate to an area the size of a dime. If OMNI said the signal was off to his right, it must be there.

Hicks took a second look outside the cab and saw there was only one place where the signal could be coming from.

The security camera on the ATM.

Hicks looked back at his handheld and tapped the icon to identify the nature of the signal. A new window opened beneath the icon, identifying the signal as part of a secure bandwidth the federal government had used various times in the past. The ATM camera only faced the street, so whoever had hacked such a complex security system clearly didn’t care about the bank. They cared about him.

Any number of government agencies could have hacked the camera feed for any number of reasons. He decided to find out who and why.

He typed in a five-digit code on his handheld and waited for one of the Operators at the University’s Varsity desk to answer.

A male Operator answered on the second ring. “Switchboard. How may I help you?”

Despite the security of the University’s closed network, a strict standard protocol was observed whenever a field agent contacted the main switchboard.

Hicks followed University protocol and gave the pre-assigned safe phrase. “This is Professor Warren. I seem to be having some trouble with my service.”

This told the operator he was James Hicks and he was safe, but was not in a location where he could speak freely. Hicks didn’t need to bother with details. The moment the call had connected, the Operator could see Hicks’ handheld’s screen on his own monitor. He knew where Hicks was and what he was trying to do.

The Operator stayed within protocol. “We’re so sorry to hear that, professor. I believe I see the nature of the problem. Would you like me to investigate it further?”

“Thank you. It would be a big help.”

He heard a blur of clicks from the other end as the Operator’s fingers flew across his terminal’s keyboard. Hicks knew he was directing OMNI to run a trace on the source of the signal, something Hicks could not do from his handheld device.

A moment later, the Operator came back on the line. “I believe we have tracked the source of the problem sir, but the situation has grown worse in the past few seconds.”

Despite the coolness of the early spring morning, sweat broke out on Hicks’ back. Operators were trained to be bland. They didn’t exaggerate. “How bad is it?”

“The problem has spread to your immediate location, sir. To be more specific, the camera inside your cab.”

Hicks froze. He had been deceiving people for more than half his life, so he knew how to keep his facial expression from changing. He casually glanced at the camera next to the rearview mirror.

A small red light now glowed next to the lens. That light hadn’t been on when he’d gotten into the cab. The driver’s hands hadn’t moved from the steering wheel, so he knew the driver hadn’t turned it on. Someone must have turned it on remotely.

This wasn’t a random hack of an ATM camera by a government agency.

This was focused on him.

Hicks looked out the cab’s window as if he had been given some mildly annoying news. He knew the camera didn’t have audio, but they could always hack the cabbie’s cell phone if they wanted to listen in. “I see. Is there anything you can do?”

“We can try, sir. Hold on for a moment.” Another blur of sound as fingers once again flew across a keyboard. “We seem to have located the exact source of the problem. You should be free and clear in a couple of minutes, professor. We’ll email you a full report of the incident shortly, and we apologize for any inconvenience.”

The line went dead as the traffic light finally turned green. Hicks didn’t know what the Operator had done. He only hoped it stopped the surveillance on him. Fast.

He eyed his handheld’s screen as the cab began to roll. The icon for his cab was now blinking red on the map, showing the federal hack on the passenger camera was still active. The red icon of the ATM camera disappeared from the map, only to be replaced by another red icon flashing over his position. He tapped on this icon and saw the feds had hacked into one of the traffic cameras installed above the traffic light.

Whoever was watching him was both capable and determined. Hacking two separate, complex camera systems at once took a technical capacity few entities had. Entities like the University.

Hicks watched the icon representing his cab fade from the map, followed by the red icon symbolizing the hacked traffic camera. The Operator had successfully spiked the hacks on all devices in the area. He eyed the handheld screen as the cab moved with traffic, waiting for another red icon to symbolize a new hack. But the map remained blank. No more red icons.

It was time to move.
Now.

“Looks like traffic’s a mess.” Hicks dug a ten-dollar bill out of his pocket and handed it to the cab driver through the plastic partition. “Pull over wherever you can. I’ll take the subway instead.”

Traffic wasn’t a mess, but at ten dollars for a three-dollar trip, the cabbie didn’t argue.

Hicks got out of the cab and walked back toward the Lexington Avenue subway. Since several train lines stopped there, he would take one at random in an effort to confuse whoever was tracking him. Later, he’d switch trains at a station without a functioning security camera and head back into Manhattan.

He walked quickly, but was careful not to run. He moved with foot traffic, blending in so as not to draw attention.

Hicks kept glancing down at his handheld as he walked, the way many of the people around him looked down at their smartphones. But while they were tapping out text messages or playing another round of Candy Crush, Hicks was watching for another red icon to appear on his map.